What Gives You the Rights?
At our senior staff meeting today we had a very interesting talk from James Lancaster, who is the BBC's Head of Rights. He's the man trying to negotiate deals with rights-holders as the BBC maps out the future of on-demand services, podcasting and giving viewers and listeners access to the BBC's archive of programmes.
I'm afraid I bombarded him with questions because this in an area that interests me a lot. At the moment we can't podcast music programmes because we don't have the right to use commercial music, unlike on radio where the BBC has negotiated a buy-out of music rights. Similarly, when it comes to comedy, the cost of repeating a programme is so expensive that it almost works out cheaper to commission a completely new programme.
Now this might be a good thing if you think the BBC should only be in the business of broadcasting original programmes, but comedy does take time to be noticed and appreciated by an audience. Very often a comedy won't build a following until it has been repeated.
James explained the complexities of all of this, but agreed with me that, while the BBC has to be seen to be treating artists and writers fairly, other organisations and individuals don't seem so worried about the legal niceties.
